SANTA MONICA : Landlord’s Petition Seeks to Pay Departing Tenants, End Rent Control
The owner of one of the largest apartment buildings in Santa Monica is circulating a petition that would allow landlords to raise rents to market rates after paying $10,000 to departing tenants.
The proposal by Lawrence Kates, owner of Santa Monica Shores, a twin-tower development with more than 500 apartment units, was immediately criticized by renters as well as other landlords, two groups that are rarely in agreement.
“Most landlords, who are too financially strained and stressed by rent control, won’t be able to (pay $10,000),” said Carl Lambert, a landlord and property owner in Santa Monica.
“As far as I can see, the only person benefiting from it is the person circulating it,” said Robert Sullivan, a partner in Sullivan Dituri Realty, one of the largest real estate and property management companies in the city. “It really just shows how desperate some people have gotten to get out from under rent control.”
Representatives of the Rent Control Board and Santa Monica Renters Rights, a renters’ rights advocacy group, dismissed the measure as a bribe scheme meant to dismantle rent control.
“This is one of the most underhanded things I’ve seen the anti-control people do,” said Lisa Monk Borrino, a board member and a tenants’ rights attorney. “They’re trying to get tenants to vote against their own best interests. And I don’t think landlords would pay it because it would take them about four years to make it up in rent.”
Nancy Greenstein, co-chair of Santa Monica Renters Rights, said her organization is advising renters not to sign the petition.
“(Kates) is playing on the worst in people and trying to buy them off,” Greenstein said. “But renters will see through it. We’ve survived 15 years of landlords trying different initiatives, and I think they underestimate renters in Santa Monica. We’re not greedy. It’ll probably make it on the ballot, and if it is, we’ll fight it as part of the rest of our campaign.”
The petition is being circulated by a group called Santa Monica Fresh Start, which has mailed 44,000 petitions and lobbied Santa Monica residents by telephone, hoping to put the measure on the ballot in November.
The signatures of 15% of the city’s registered voters, about 8,790 people, must be gathered by mid-June before the measure can qualify on the ballot, according to the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder’s office.
Kates, owner of Wilshire Property Management in Los Angeles, referred calls from The Times to his political consultant, George Young.
“(Kates) sees the entire city decaying, especially the rental housing inventory,” said Young, who has worked on political campaigns for Ronald Reagan.
“This provides incentive for landlords to upgrade their units and get back into the rental market at fair market value,” he said. “You can’t compete with the rental market in Los Angeles if you aren’t able to raise rents.”
Santa Monica is no stranger to such proposals. In 1983, the so-called HOME (Home Ownership Made Easy) Initiative was presented to voters, financially backed by a number of landlords, including Kates. The initiative would have allowed renters to buy their apartments, but it was rejected.
A year later, the Tenant Ownership Rights Charter Amendment (TORCA) was passed, allowing apartments to be converted to condominiums if two-thirds of tenants agree to the conversion and half agree to buy them. TORCA also guarantees rent control protection for the remaining units.
But still bigger threats are hanging over Santa Monica’s rent control law. A statewide decontrol bill sponsored by Assemblyman Jim Costa (D-Fresno) and Bernie Richter (R-Chico) would also allow rents to move to market levels upon vacancy, making the municipal ballot moot.
Political consultant Young said that if the state legislation is passed, Santa Monica Fresh Start will confer with lawyers about whether they should continue their campaign.
Asked if the petition is an attempt to cash in on the desperation of tenants displaced by the Northridge earthquake, Young said there is no connection.
“This is just a straightforward, single proposal that voters can understand,” Young said, “and it’s not a landlord proposal in the organizational sense. We didn’t go to either group--landlords or renters.”
The city of Santa Monica has one of the strictest rent control laws in the country, with base rents pegged to 1978 levels. Rents can be raised by 3% annually. They may also be raised if a building’s rents are below the city’s median rates and if a capital improvement has been made, said Cass Ben-Levi, senior operations analyst for the Rent Control Board.
The average two-bedroom rental in the Santa Monica Shores apartments, located between Main Street and the beach, goes for about $742, according to 1992 Santa Monica rent control records. One local realtor estimated that such units would go for about $1,500 a month on the open market.
